Social Skills Matter For Lawyers: How To Improve Them

Never underestimate the impact good social skills play in your career.

Why Do You Need Social Skills?

Recently a client of mine who works for one of the top law firms was selected from a talent pool of 2000 + to be one of 25  invited to socialise with partners at a dinner in London. 

The partners made it clear that for the firm to remain successful future partners would need to be more than just good lawyers. They would need excellent social skills to help build, develop and retain clients. 

The partners recognised that AI would impact the legal profession in a big way and that the only difference between firms would be the way they connected to clients. This meant recruiting lawyers with excellent social skills including social skills in English as well as their native language.

The truth is that in any industry and not just law people want to work with people they like even if they are incompetent. 

A Japanese lawyer that I worked with found himself in exactly this situation. He was an expert in his field and highly regarded by his fellow lawyers but he spoke very little English. As a result, he was losing international clients to junior lawyers who spoke better English. It was embarrassing for him but the truth was simple being able to connect with clients was more important to them than being the best lawyer in the country.  

Bad Social Skills Make You A Bad Lawyer

In an interview with Penelope Trunk, Tiziana Casciaro professor at Harvard Business School said,

 “How we value competence changes depending on whether we like someone or not.” And people who lack social competence end up looking like they lack other competencies, too.

This means that if people think you are bad at speaking English they automatically assume you are bad at law.

Beware of AI

For junior lawyers and those looking to climb the corporate ladder, social skills matter more than ever. This is because the only thing that makes you different from your colleagues is how likeable you are and how good your social skills are. 

The need for social skills is only going to increase as soon a lot of the lower end, repetitive work will be done by AI.

You only have to take a look at Laurence the AI paralegal built by non-lawyers Flinn Dolman, Pierre Proner and Jaime van Oers, for their website Lawhive to get a glimpse into the future and to understand just how much AI is changing the industry. 

Lawrence is only a baby at the moment but it is one hell of a baby and it has already passed the SQE 1 ( Solicitors Qualifying Exam) achieving an impressive 74%. The average human scores 55-60%. 

Lawrence also did well in the client interview test. It was able to obtain all the relevant information. However, humans did better. The human interviewers chatty approach allowed them to connect better to the client and uncover additional information which could have been beneficial. AI was proficient but the human connection got a better result.

The fact is Lawrence is good and it proves that AI is a major force to be dealt with.

When it comes to careers and climbing the corporate or partnership ladder, social skills are more important than ever before. This means that as demand for social skills increases the better your social skills have to be in English.

Most people have to work at improving their social skills, it can be done but it does need practice. I’ve conducted well over 10,000 online English sessions so small talk is easy for me and I’ve learned a lot about what can move a conversation forward and what doesn’t.  

The good news is there are techniques you can use to improve your English communication skills. The first step is to change your mindset. 

Prof. Casciaro’s research shows that the biggest obstacle to likeability is not caring. So if you change your attitude and “just decide you want to do better,” you increase your chances of success.

Many people advise looking for common ground and trying to find something that connects you. This is not so easy to do. In order to find common ground you have to ask a lot of questions which turns a conversation into a police interrogation. You lose every time.

The best approach by far is to practice active listening. You can read more about Active listening here. 

Active listening opens the door to common ground. When you have an opening to connect you can then use communication tools to connect on a deeper level and move the conversation forward. This is going to make you more likeable and improve your opportunities.

According to Casciaro people are more likely to notice an increase in your likeability factor than an increase in your skills. 

So next time you consider improving your English, choose English coaching over standard English classes and you’ll likely get more value and progress more.

Book a chat with Caryn

Want to improve your vocabulary?

Check out my essential Idioms for Business Ebook Here

Generated with Pin Generator